Brink,

No,I haven't used Disc Cleanup or any other disc cleanup program that
would clean restore points. I do occasionally,once a month,use Ascentive
PC SpeedScan Pro to check my computer for errors,but I have found that
when I do the scan and/or fix the errors that it has found,it hasn't had
any affect on system restore points. The Ascentive Software comes from
finallyfast.com-I saw the commercial and went online to purchase it in
October-I've only been having a problem with restore points for only a
month now,so,if the Ascentive software caused me to lose restore
points,it would have done it back in October and November.

The reason I felt the need to purchase the Ascentive software is
because back in October(October 15th to be exact),my laptop's screen
became black with a mouse cursor in the middle of it that would move
after automatic installation of 5 Windows Updates. After that,I turned
the computer off and then turned it on and I was presented with the
screen that said Launch Startup Repair or Start Windows Normally and it
said something to the effect that my computer has been damaged or
something. To make a long story short(I'll try),I called Gateway tech
support after launching startup repair and trying to start windows
normally-they failed and my computer kept rebooting over and over again
trying to repair itself to no avail,but anyway,Gateway tech rep. took me
through most of the F8 options: system restore,last good
configuration,etc. and none of those worked(my computer would not start
up or take me to the logon screen) and what I was left with was full
factory recovery or recovery with automatic data backup,and I chose
recovery with automatic data backup even though Gateway told me to
choose full factory recovery because I had never backed up any of my
files prior to my computer failing,so I had no choice and nothing to
lose. If I would have chose full factory recovery,I would have lost
everything.

Since doing the recovery with automatic data backup,I have had many
problems with my computer that have mostly been fixed. For 2 months
after doing the recovery with backup my computer had blue screens,was
freezing constantly,losing Windows Update History even though I had set
it up for updates after the recovery with backup,and most importantly my
computer was doing an automatic disc check about everytime I turned on
my computer-The screen would say "Checking file system on C,One of your
discs needs to be checked for consistency." Then it would proceed to
recover orphaned and lost files,delete corrupted files,something with
bad sectors and on and on. But,it doesn't do any of this anymore after
doing a complete disc check on December 9th-it went through all 5 stages
and that nicked these problems in the bud-no more freezing,blue
screens,automatic disc checks etc-a Gateway tech had me do the full disc
check-it took 2-3 hours to do that. But,the only problem I am having
right now is with the system restore and occasionally internet explorer
stops responding,but that's about it.

I do believe there's some lingering corrupted and lost files issues
because I ran the full disc check a couple of weeks ago,and the screen
during the disc check is still showing that it is recovering lost files
and deleted corrupted files,etc. And I just ran a scan with the
Ascentive software yesterday,and it says that I have 8 Class errors,4
Missing Shared files errors,and 15 Invalid File extension errors. I have
not clicked the button to fix the errors yet,though. What all this
could mean?-I don't know. Maybe,there are missing files or registry
errors(Class errors) that could be causing me to lose restore points-I
don't know. What do you think? I do have all my old preOctober 15th
program and window files in my C backup folder from doing the recovery
with automatic data backup,so I might could replace the system restore
program or repair it with a corresponding file in that C backup folder.
I was able to do that with the SensApi(system 32 file) that was causing
problems-I was getting a popup error screen saying that there was an
error with the SensApi file and I deleted that file and replaced it with
the exact system 32 file in my C backup folder,and it fixed it-no more
pesky SensApi error screens! Could I do something like that with the
system restore program that is not working correctly? Could I replace
some of the System Restore files with the same corresponding files that
I have in my C backup folder like I did with the SensApi file?

Thank You,
TGL


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TGL